Second Tooth Finally Here

This morning when I was wiping Julia's gums, she gave me a nice hard bite. That is when I noticed her second tooth on the bottom. Yay! It's finally poked through. There seems to be continuous amounts of drool still so I assume more teeth are on the way. Let's see when the next ine will pop out.

Cold - Going Around the House

Uh oh, looks like we are having another battle of the colds. Jasmine caught something at the community center during her ballet class. She came home with a slight runny nose. Did I mention that Jasmine is taking ballet classes? Yeah, for 2 year olds! Put a bunch of little toddlers together, play some music, and ask them to bounce around or pretend to be a rocket ship. That's ballet for them.

Jasmine's cold got steadily worse on Tuesday and she started wheezing (difficulty breathing) as well as a fever, cough and stuffy nose. I only found out in the afternoon after I came home from visiting a cousin's place. Before I even had a chance to take off my jacket, I had to leave for the doctor's office.

To help the wheezing, we were prescribed some meds to be administered every 4 hours via nebulizer. Terrific. Nothing like adding another item on my list that needs to be done day and night. Here's a pic of Jasmine taking in her dose of meds:



By the way, I did a jumperoo swap for a month so this "new" one is only temporary. Hope they don't mind Jasmine sitting in it. She just can't keep away from any new toys in the house. I promise, she won't break it...

Unfortunately, Julia caught the cold from Jasmine so she is now coughing away with a fever and a nose running like a tap. No meds for Julia though. I kinda wish that Julia can take meds so that some of her symptoms would go away (like her runny nose, then she can at least drink milk without popping on and off). My plan is to have all-night-parties until the kiddies get better, since I have to stay up all night long anyways (just kidding). 6 hours sleep in 48 hours. Let's see how much sleep I'll get tonight.

8 Months - Julia

Julia turned 8 months today. Look at her pretty 1-tooth smile (click on photo to enlarge). The next check up is at 9 months so no stats to report.

I am happy to inform that Julia loves playing with paper, pamphlets and magazines. She just chews on everything that is paper! Here she is, playing with a cardboard box:

Toilet Training - She did it!

This past long weekend, we started potty training Jasmine again. Yes, again. We've been training on and off since she turned 2 years old to no success. Jasmine will be turning 3 next month so we think she should be out of diapers by then.

After 3 days of hardcore training, Jasmine peepee and pooped in the bathroom toilet today! Yay! I'm so proud of her. We could see it in her face, of how proud of herself she was too (not to mention all the chocolate she got when she made it to the toilet).

For the past 3 days, we let Jasmine run around butt naked from the waist down. By doing this, Jasmine learned how to hold it in and run to the bathroom when she had the urge to go. Previously we put Jasmine in underwear and she would pee/poo on the floor so that didn't work. I'm so glad we decided to change our strategy.

It's funny watching her run back and forth from the living room to the bathroom constantly as she learns how to use her bladder muscles. It's definitely a learning process. We'll continue training her (go naked) for a few more days until she routinely uses the bathroom all time. Go Jasmine go!

Megan's 2nd Birthday Party

We celebrated Megan's 2nd birthday today and enjoyed a nice lunch at their house. There were lots of kiddies there, over 50 people (adults and kids)! There were tons of food including yummy chocolate cupcakes and jello (all the other food were not important, haha). Jasmine did eat some chicken, corn and fruit. They even had a bouncy castle in the backyard where all the children were jumping in like crazy (Jasmine included).

We tried to take a picture with the birthday girl, but all 3 of them (Jasmine, Megan and Julia) were all staring at the chocolate cupcakes! Such cuties.

Sleep Feed Schedule - 7 months

Julia is finally starting to accept solid food. This is a pic of her enjoying some honeydew in a mesh bag, so she can safely gum and suck all the yummy juice without Mommy worrying about her choking on anything.

I've been trying to put Julia on some sort of daily feed/sleep schedule because her day is totally unstructured. So far, I've figured out that she can take 6oz of milk at maximum capacity. 4.5-5oz is her comfort zone. She usually doesn't drink more than 5oz at a sitting except just before bedtime so now I offer her 4.5oz in every bottle. This is what the schedule looks like at 7.5 months:

7am - wake up and 4.5oz bottle
8:15am - nap
9am - wake and play
10am - 4.5oz bottle
11am - nap
12pm - lunch (1oz veggie or fruit)
1pm - 4.5oz bottle
3pm - nap
4pm - 4.5oz bottle
5pm - dinner (1oz veggieo or fruit)
6:30pm - 6oz bottle
7pm - bedtime

This is really a rough schedule, because she doesn't have a set wake up time. I would never wake her up in the morning, because I need my sleep (LOL). So if she wakes at 6am instead, then the entire schedule is moved up an hour. If she wakes at 7:30am, then the schedule is moved off by 30 minutes.

Julia is not eating alot of solids at this point so her diet is still mostly breastmilk. I've tried feeding cereals (rice and oatmeal) but unfortunately every time I feed her a type of cereal, she gets a eczema on her face so she may be allergic to something. I don't know what it is at this point (I hope she is not allergic to rice!).

She's taking 3 naps a day which seems to be working well. Her awake time really isn't that long. I'm trying to figure out how to extend her nap times which would work better but so far no luck. I'm currently trying a technique called wake-to-sleep but it's only worked 2 times out of the 10 times so far. I basically tiptoe into Julia's room after she's fallen asleep for 25 minutes, then kinda rub her cheek until she moves her head the other way, and then I creep out quietly. This disturbs her from deep sleep, moving her into light sleep again so that she is in another sleep cycle. We'll see if I can do better this week.

Rolling Both Ways!

I've waited for this day to come since... last weekend. Julia can now roll both ways. Julia was rolling from her back to her tummy but not the other way around until today. Hooray! What a relief, because I no longer (less often anyways) have to dash into her room to turn her onto her back every few minutes. That was so, so, so, so much work. Sigh. I can at least enjoy my sleep slightly more now.

It's pretty cute the way she does it. When Julia is on her belly, she lifts her leg upwards to push off of the floor, then lifts both arms straight up above her head, and arches her back, then FLOP. She's back onto her back. She does it in a very S-L-O-W motion though, like a turtle. I'll have to see if I can get it on video. Will post if I get it.

Mommy - Pick it up!

Every day I play with Julia, trying to teach her something new. She's 7.5 months old, very curious but not crawling yet so it's hard to entertain her. She's got tons of toys but she never seems to be interested for very long. She seems to enjoy books, especially the hard cover books but she mainly just sticks them into her mouth until it becomes a slobber mess. Not intellectually stimulating...

Today, she seemed to have learned a new game though. It's called the drop it, pick it up game. More like give Julia a toy to grab, then look at Mommy, and then slowly let go of the toy to drop it on the floor so Mommy can pick it up. And she keeps on doing this over and over again. She gives me this tiny smile as she does it too. What a cheeky baby.